Contagion

I've added contagion to a leveled CWDT setup and it seems to work nicely to supplement another main spell skill. I'm using blade vortex with poison support as a shadow and there is decent synergy with that and contagion (passive tree nodes for increased duration, chaos damage, damage over time for example). I'm also trying this with essence drain in the same link with CWDT, but it's hard to distinguish when that happens - I'm not sure what the visual cue is for that skill. For the trifecta, I also have a low level CWDT setup with wither and immortal call.

This is just an experiment, but it looks good so far using these new chaos skills with CWDT support.

Just a thought...

But what if Contagion wasn't an active skill, but rather a support gem?
Make it only work with chaos damage, and we could see some very interesting combos arise without the need for this really clunky combo crap.

Obviously it wouldn't spread the damage entirely if this was done, but hey. At least it would be more usable in group play.

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Tyroki wrote:

Just a thought...

But what if Contagion wasn't an active skill, but rather a support gem?
Make it only work with chaos damage, and we could see some very interesting combos arise without the need for this really clunky combo crap.

Obviously it wouldn't spread the damage entirely if this was done, but hey. At least it would be more usable in group play.

don't nerf skills because you're too lazy to cast them please :v
contagion works perfectly fine with group play as is mechanically..

if mobs are getting killed too fast by your team mate, being more powerful yourself isn't gonna work anyway.

So, firstly I'd like it if contagion could spread from corpses, much like ele proliferation. The base radius of the spread is very inconveniently small for large spread out groups. Simply casting Essence Drain with pierce/fork/chain will work better. Contagion only works better for very dense packs making it very situational.

Secondly, I'd like for contagion to have some sort of secondary effect opening it up for other uses than simply together with Essence Drain. Currently it is only useful at all together with ED. As it turns out however ED can do just fine without Contagion! That's as it should be, I think.

Contagion too should have other uses than together with just ED. Clearly it was meant to be a combo skill, so I'd suggest some more interactions with other debuffs OR some static always available effect on the skill itself.

Hm, hello everyone!

Just my two cents regarding feedback for this gem:
It can spread (and even effect enemies via casting) through walls. No line-of-sight-check as it seems.

Is this intended? *feels sorta weird, though would be a sad story if a tree kills the spreading* :D

Take care!

ps: I personally like the Contagion+Essence Drain combo, it's very pleasing to have a pack debuffed, throw in an orb of "you gonna die" and see them fall one by one :) really appreciate this skill (though would like have Essence Drain to have better regen at lower levels, buuut that's another story!)

These gems are pretty powerful, and I really like the implementation of having to use two active skills to do good damage. I think it adds a lot of variety and skill to the playstyle. I do have a few concerns, though.

-Why doesn't contagion spread constantly, rather than just on death? That doesn't make much thematic sense, and it really hurts the damage potential of the skill (which isn't too high to begin with).

-Why don't corpses spread contagion? (same concerns as above)

-The cast speed should probably be a bit faster, since you have to use it in conjunction with Essence Drain to do decent DPS.

When this skill works, it works really well and absolutely melts mobs with Essence Drain. The issue is it doesn't work often enough.

The more i use contagion the more i feel that the added AOE from tree or gem is not actualy applied when spreading...
The spread seems to be far more limited that what it should be.

Is it just me or do you feel the same way ?

Are far as i can understand, a mob under contagion dying from ED should spread to all the mobs within the range of contagion (a circle of the AOE of contagion with the mob at the center of the circle). Is my assumption correct ?

I'm a casual PoE player; I rolled a new Shadow in the softcore Talisman league to try out the new chaos mechanics, and I'm only part-way through A3 normal so far.

Equipment:

Passive tree:


I got lucky when one of the first talismans I picked up was "26% increased chaos damage". My usual combat style is to run past a bunch of stuff, wait for it to catch up to me, cast Contagion and then follow up with ED... and if the pack is dense enough, they all just melt in front of me. Sometimes they die before I get around to casting ED. The Weaver only got to hide once before she died, and I think the Vaal Oversoul only hid twice, which might be a personal best.

I've seen stuff like this before in videos of OP endgame builds, but I've never had so much effective DPS myself... *especially* considering how terrible my gear is, and the fact I've deliberately avoided taking all the juicy chaos/DoT passive nodes (so far!).

I am currently playing a pure chaos AoE caster Witch with Essence Drain, Contagion and Wither for bosses as well as Vulnerability in aura mode.

The need to combo these skills is an iteresting mechanic but the very slow cast speed of Essence Drain and Contagion make it extremely clunky. I can see the need for the low damage effectiveness and cast speed of ED but Contagion could really use a cast speed buff!

There is no benefit of spamming it since the effects don't stack so the only thing its slow cast speed does is make feel the combo clunky, unless of course i am missing some hidden way to abuse Contagion ;)

"

Tyroki wrote:

After further playing with it, I've come to the conclusion that Contagion and Essence Drain were the same skill, arbitrarily split in to two skills.

Seems what I came here to say was already said many times, and very succinctly by this post. Contagion without ED is useless, Contagion only spreads ED, so why have them 2 skills?

I'd suggest:
Contagion spread other things to make it versatile, like Poison, Curses, Bleeding, etc.
Essence Drain have some reason to GMP, Chain, or Fork. Maybe ditch the Contagion & ED romance?
Wither... maybe I'll try it out, even though it looks unappealing. Seems to be blatantly designed for Totem, so why not just make it a totem?